Subaru didn't even realize he was moving. He was mid-sprint, lunging toward Regulus with a throat-tearing roar.
"Subaru, wait!"
Wilhelm's voice cracked with desperation as he reached out, his fingers catching only empty air.
Regulus didn't move. He didn't even flinch. He just stood there with that faint, bored smirk as Subaru's curse-infused fist swung with enough force to shatter stone.
The punch landed true, but it did practically nothing to move the Archbishop.
Yet, Subaru didn't stop. He let out a primal scream, unleashing a frantic flurry of strikes. Knuckles, elbows, palms—every blow hissed through the air, only to clank against the void surrounding the Archbishop.
"Honestly, it's exhausting..."
Regulus sighed, looking at his fingernails.
"If I weren't such a remarkably patient soul, I would have ended you both the moment you stepped into my sight. But look at you——swinging your fists like a rabid dog. Do you have no respect for my personal space? My right to be left unharmed? It's an infringement on my very existence."
"Shut your mouth!" Subaru screamed, his vision tunneling into a red haze of fury. "Just shut up and die!"
Regulus's eyes glinted with a cold, sharp amusement.
"You truly believe that shouting and flailing will change the natural order of things? How incredibly self-centered. To think your 'will' matters more than my right to peace... it's truly disgusting."
Regulus raised a hand, his fingers poised like a conductor about to start a symphony.
Subaru's instincts screamed at him to move, his muscles locking up in anticipation of a blow. Suddenly, the air itself seemed to move. An invisible pressure slammed into Subaru's chest, throwing him back several meters until his heels dug into the dirt.
"You are nothing but noise, a fleeting disturbance in a world that owes me everything. You cannot touch what refuses to be touched."
Wilhelm stepped in front of Subaru, his blade leveled at Regulus's throat, though the old man's eyes were tight with a rare trace of sweat.
"Subaru, get back! This is not a man we can fight!"
"No——!"
Subaru forced himself upright, his fists crackling with a jagged, unstable purple light.
"This bastard killed Gojo-sensei! I don't care what he is——I'll break through it. I'll break him!"
He surged forward again, his movements desperate and violent. Every strike was an explosion of raw, cursed energy, a frantic attempt to find a single crack in the Archbishop's perfection.
Regulus let out a short, hollow laugh that echoed unpleasantly through the trees.
"By all means, keep trying..." Regulus sneered. "Exhaust yourself. Break your bones against me. Eventually, even a fool like you has to realize that your best amounts to absolutely nothing."
—————————————
——Arlam Village.
The wife ,stepped forward, her hand trembling as she gripped the dagger. Her eyes were hollow, fixed on the sobbing, orange-haired girl at her feet.
"...I'm sorry," the woman whispered, her voice brittle. "We can't stand against that man. He's absolute. He's invincible. To defy him is to invite a death worse than this."
Petra's muffled cries filled the stagnant air——until a sharp, jagged sound shattered the silence.
"Ahhh... I've done it! I've done it! I've really, reallydone it!!"
Every head snapped toward the source. Disbelief washed over the faces of the women who had just watched a man get torn into a bloodied husk. He should have been a corpse. He should have been meat for the crows.
But there he was.
Satoru Gojo stood tall, his clothes tattered and soaked in crimson, but his body unblemished. He was grinning with the wild, frenzied energy of a man who had just looked into the eye of God and didn't blink.
"Reverse Cursed Technique... so this is the core of Jujutsu!" He shouted.
He threw his arms wide, a manic laugh tearing from his throat——
"Gyahaha... ahahahahaha! HAH! HAHAHAHAA!!"
The wife froze, her dagger shaking. Before she could even draw a breath, Gojo was there. He didn't walk; he simply occupied the space in front of her. The dried blood on his pale face made him look like a vengeful ghost returned from the transition.
His hand slammed onto her shoulder. The grip wasn't a caress; it was a jarring, heavy weight that pinned her to the spot. His laughter died instantly, replaced by a cold, predatory focus.
"You're one of Regulus's 'wives,' aren't you?" Gojo's voice was low, vibrating with a terrifying intensity. "You know how he does it. You know his trick."
The woman shivered, her knees buckling under the sheer pressure of his presence. Gojo's eyes, visible behind the tilt of his glasses, had turned into pearlescent voids of pure menace.
"Tell me," he leaned in, his shadow swallowing her whole. "Or I'll kill every last one of you."
It was a bluff, of course. Even in this state of "ecstasy," Satoru Gojo wasn't a monster. But in that moment, looking into those eyes that saw everything and felt nothing, the woman couldn't tell the difference.
———————————————
Wilhelm watched in a tense, heavy silence, his knuckles white against the hilt of his sword. His fury mirrored Subaru's—a cold, sharp outrage at the news of Gojo's death—but decades of slaughter had taught the Sword Demon one thing: restraint.
He could sense it; any offense against this Sin Archbishop was currently irrelevant.
Subaru's breath came in ragged, desperate bursts. His teeth were clamped shut as every frantic strike met nothing but empty air.
"Damn you, damn you, damn you!" He spat, his muscles screaming as he punched into the void.
"It's like trying to teach a Witchbeast etiquette. You simply lack the capacity to learn."
Regulus's mocking voice sliced through the air. He reached out slowly—a casual movement, yet it was one that gave Subaru the familiar sensation of death.
Subaru's eyes widened. His cursed energy flared, a hot, jagged purple light as he threw himself backward to create space.
Then——BOOOOOOM!
The earth where he had stood a millisecond prior didn't just break; it was eradicated. A perfect circular gouge was erased by Regulus's swipe, the resulting shockwave roaring toward Subaru like a physical wall.
I'm going to die... but it's better this way… in the next loop, I'll save Gojo——
SWOOSH——
Before the destruction could swallow him, something grabbed Subaru. An invisible force yanked him out of the path of the blast. In a blink, the scenery blurred and he was gone. The forest groaned as the wind screamed through the vacuum where Subaru had just been.
"What...?"
Subaru's voice was a frail whisper, lost in the settling dust.
His eyes snapped open, heart hammering against his ribs. The wind howled in his ears, swirling leaves and grit around him like the breath of a storm. He barely had time to register the weightlessness before a pair of solid, unyielding arms caught him.
"Got you..."
It was Gojo. His voice was lower, rougher, but threaded with that unmistakable, cocky edge.
His white hair was a mess, and his eyes—usually so calm—were blazing with a manic, electric light.
"You... How... how are you alive...!!?"
Regulus's voice cracked. The mask of arrogant detachment finally fractured. His lips trembled, his pristine composure fraying into a mix of genuine shock and soaring rage.
"How dare you?! By what right do you stand there?!"
Gojo tilted his head back. His lips split into a wide, jagged grin.
"Keh... gyahahaha——AHA!!"
He burst into laughter. It wasn't the refined, playful chuckle of the Strongest Sorcerer. It was unfiltered. Explosive. Unhinged.
"S-Sensei...?"
Subaru's voice was cautious. There was something fundamentally different about the man holding him.
Gojo turned slightly, just enough for Subaru to see the dried crimson staining his pale skin, his glowing blue eyes peering through the shadow of his hair.
"Oh... let me tell you, then!"
His voice dropped, vibrating with a terrifying, restrained energy.
"I had... an EPIPHANY!"
He raised his hand and clenched it into a fist, a faint, clean shimmer of energy swirling around his knuckles.
"Reverse Cursed Technique, baby! Took every ounce of focus I had left, but... I DID IT!"
He leaned forward, his grin stretching even wider.
"Turns out, DYING is a great way to learn a new trick!!"
Regulus scoffed, his face twisting with genuine disgust.
"You've gone mad. Your brush with death has reduced you to babbling nonsense. You should've stayed dead. I——"
Too slow.
Gojo vanished.
CRACK-FWOOSH—!!
There was no sound of footsteps, only the repetitive slap of displaced air, like heavy rain hitting the pavement. The world blurred into a smear of colors. In a single heartbeat, Gojo had closed the gap, his arrival preceded by a wall of pressure that made the very earth groan.
His fist ignited. The cursed energy wasn't the controlled flicker from before; it was raw, jagged, and hungry. He didn't taunt. He didn't posture. He just struck.
FWOOM-!!
A geyser of dust and pulverized stone erupted skyward. The impact was seismic, a shockwave that flattened the surrounding treeline in a perfect, expanding ring. Regulus was sent skidding, his heels carving a trench into the terrain as if he'd been struck by a falling star.
And yet, he rose. Slowly. Dusting off his white lapel, his suit still stubbornly pristine.
"You bastard! Your very existence is a violation of my rights! You dare violate my sanctity—my personal space—with those filthy, violent fists of yours?!"
Gojo just tilted his head, that manic, wide-eyed grin etched onto his face.
Regulus moved. No warning, no wind-up. Just blinding, lethal motion.
Gojo's pupils shrank.
He's fast...
Faster than anyone he'd encountered in this world, save perhaps a certain red-haired saint.
Regulus flicked his wrist, and the air itself turned into a blade. The dust from their clash didn't disperse; it froze in place, forming a vertical line of absolute stillness. It wasn't a physical object——it was a wave of erasure.
SWISH——!!
Gojo blurred backward, slipping between layers of reality. To Subaru, it looked like a flickering afterimage. Trees shattered like glass as Gojo ducked and weaved, zigzagging through the forest like a living missile. Then, his heel dug into the dirt, sending cracks spiraling outward.
He then threw himself into the air as his instincts screamed.
The forest beneath him suddenly explosed. A clean, gaping swath of nothingness was left in the wake of Regulus's authority. From the air, Gojo looked down, and the world turned blue.
BOOM——!!
Gravity obeyed his command. Blue pulled at his frame, turning him into a human meteor that fell straight toward the Archbishop.
Gojo's fist collided with the space Regulus occupied.
A ripple of nullified force tried to stop him——it felt like punching the skin of the world itself.
But momentum met immovable will, and the ground imploded.
Chunks of debris meters wide were flung into the sky as the surrounding forest lifted, gravity reversing for a fraction of a second.
Gojo rode the chaos. He used the floating debris as stepping stones, each launch sounding like a crack of thunder.
The wives said he's invincible...
Gojo thought, his mind racing faster than his body.
And it's tied to them... but they wouldn't give me the specifics.
Mid-air, Gojo stilled himself. Infinity halted his momentum in a heartbeat. He leveled his fingers like a pistol, aiming at the crater below. A crimson light, violent and repulsive, burned into existence.
"——Reversal: Red!"
The explosive pushing force struck the world beneath and reality buckled under the pressure, the ground sinking even further as trees and soil were crushed into a gravitational pit.
Gojo landed in the silence that followed. He exhaled and looked back at Subaru, who was standing there with his mouth hanging open, and Wilhelm, whose sword was actually slack in his hand.
Gojo gave them a casual thumbs-up.
"You guys should probably get out of here——"
A series of detonations erupted to the side. Perfect circular holes were carved into the earth as Regulus emerged like a devil, his face unmarked, his eyes boiling with a level of rage that bordered on insanity.
He lunged——straight for Subaru.
Heh, what a dirty bastard!
Gojo clapped his hands together.
SWISH——
Space collapsed and reassembled. Using the sheer control of his Blue, Gojo teleported, catching Subaru mid-air and ripping him out of the path of certain death.
But Regulus actually managed to slow himself down in a clumsy fashion before twisting to strike.
Gojo raised his arms in a cross-guard. The impact didn't feel like a punch; it felt like he himself no longer existed. There was no sensation of force, only displacement.
Gojo flew. He was hurled backward at a speed that ignored friction.
The mountain looming in the distance, suddenly appeared before him.
CRRAAAACKK——!!
He drilled through the solid rock, stone shredding around him, ribs snapping with a dull internal thud. He emerged on the other side into a hidden, hollowed-out cavern, skidding through the dirt in a cloud of smoke.
"…Tch."
He wiped a smear of blood from his lip. Then, he started to laugh. It started as a low chuckle and built into something loud, unhinged, and terrifyingly alive.
"Gyahahaha… is that all you've got?!"
He cracked his neck. The broken bones snapped back into place with a sickening pop, the cuts on his arms stitching shut as the skin knit itself whole again.